Saturday, November 17, 2012

John Key and that gay red jersey

(First published in the Dominion Post, November 16.)

ACUTE sensitivity disorder has gripped the nation again. The latest outbreak
was touched off by prime minister John Key’s comment that a radio interviewer’s
red jersey looked a bit “gay”. As predictably as Pavlov’s dogs learned to
salivate at the sound of a bell, the gay lobby rose up in anger.

Protesters labelled it a slur against gays and took to the
streets wearing red tops as a gesture of solidarity with the oppressed. Sir Ian McKellen, perhaps mistakenly
thinking his on-screen aura of Gandalfian wisdom has somehow carried over into
real life, went online to register his dismay.

I suspect most New Zealanders would have viewed the fuss with
an air of worldly resignation. They have become well-accustomed to minority
groups rearing up on their hind legs at every imagined slight.

If the gay rights lobby is to be believed, Mr Key’s
statement was likely to excite prejudice against gay men. But what’s more likely
to generate a backlash is the fuss gay activists make every time someone says anything
that might be construed, however tenuously, as an attack on them.

In many people’s eyes, it reinforces the impression – am I
allowed to say this? – that they are a bit precious.

We live in a robust, liberal democracy. People say things
every day that could cause upset if the maligned parties were of a mind to take
offence. Most of us manage to ignore it and get on with life.

In Mr Key’s case, he was merely making an attempt to sound
blokey in order to connect with that radio programme’s predominantly male, rural audience.

Politicians do this all the time, possibly without even
realising it. I remember years ago hearing Helen Clark being interviewed on a
youth-oriented radio station in Auckland. It was a different Helen Clark than
I’d ever heard before: both her manner of speaking and the language she used
were obviously calculated to communicate with that particular audience.

N

o one can seriously accuse Mr Key of being anti-gay. How
quickly his critics forget that he has ingratiated himself with gay men too –
for example, by speaking at the Big Gay Out rally in Auckland last February and
posing for photographs with transvestites and bare-chested gay men.

That’s what politicians do: pander to whichever group they
happen to be addressing at the time. But surely there are far worse things a
prime minister could be accused of than trying to be one of the boys.

* * *

DEAR ME. The Labour Party’s problems are graver than I
thought.

At the party’s annual conference on Sunday, leader David
Shearer will deliver a speech that is being treated as a make-or-break moment. Many
in the party are unhappy with his performance and will look to his address for
a sign one way or another: either he can galvanise Labour with an
inspirational, visionary speech or he becomes a footnote in the party’s
history.

Trying to shore up his credentials in an article published
in this paper last week, Mr Shearer was reported as saying: “I believe I have
very strong views. I am very value-driven as a politician.” He went on to say
he had lived the values of “opportunity, fairness and giving people a fair go”.

Really? Is that the best he can do? He “believes” he has strong
views? Is he waiting for confirmation from someone else? Such equivocal language
is likely to reinforce rather than counteract suspicions about his lack of
fire.

And how strikingly unoriginal to say he believes in
“fairness” and a “fair go”. Show me a politician who doesn’t profess to believe
in a fair go. It’s probably the most shop-soiled cliché in the politician’s
lexicon.

Mr Shearer’s comments ahead of his speech hardly seem likely
to create a sense of feverish anticipation. But then, are his prospective rivals
any more promising?

The Listener
recently published a profile of another Labour Party David, the ambitious David
Cunliffe, and it seems he too has trouble breaking out of the cliché trap. In
his own words, he has certain ideals and values “and they are about fairness,
about equity, about opportunity and it’s good old Kiwi stuff, you know”.

Wow. There’s fresh thinking for you. Isn’t there anyone in
the Labour hierarchy capable of elevating the political dialogue above the
level of a 1960s bumper-sticker?

* * *

I WAS ASTONISHED
recently to see a BBC correspondent named Jeremy Bowen reporting from the
Middle East on One News.

How did this bloke ever get on television? He’s male, for a
start, and he’s more than 50 years old – a veritable fossil. He’s got thinning
grey hair and an unfashionable moustache. Doesn’t the BBC have any respect for
its viewers?

Then there’s Orla Guerin, another BBC reporter who keeps
popping up in world trouble spots. At least she’s female, but come on – she’s
46 years old!

What’s more, she doesn’t seem to care too much about her
appearance. She doesn’t even wear makeup. Can’t they find her a backroom job
somewhere?

How much nicer to see the pretty young things TVNZ and TV3
employ. Thank God our own broadcasters still strive to maintain some sort of
basic standard, even if the Beeb doesn’t.

Cut and paste from elsewhere. - "Far more than Du Fresne thinks. The problems is not with the NZ television journalists but with the structures that they work within. After the 2011 tsunami had struck Japan TVNZ had their correspondent Steve Marshall do a piece on Fukushima from HONG KONG. TVNZ had ordered him away. By comparison the BBC's Damian Grammaticus did his piece with the Fukushima cooling towers visible in the distance.Another example is Kim Vinnell She left TVNZ and moved to East Africa. Her work since then has been exceptional. Seek out her radio piece on the troubles in Mali.

TVNZ and TV3 are infotainment services under using some solid talent."

About Me

I am a freelance journalist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.